South African Man Wakes in Morgue Fridge After Mistakenly Presumed Dead

[The Seeker]

Have you ever woken up thinking that you were still in a dream? One South African man must have felt like he was in a nightmare when he awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge — nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.
Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.


Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death.


“When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing,†Maqolo told the Associated Press.


But a day after staff put the body into a locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost, the morgue owner said.


“I couldn’t believe it!†Maqolo said. “I was also scared. But they are my employees and I had to show them I wasn’t scared, so I called the police.â€


After police arrived, the group entered the morgue together.
“I was glad they had their firearms, in case something wanted to fight with us,†Maqolo said.


He said the man was pale when they pulled him out.


“He asked, ‘How did I get here?’†Maqolo said.


The health department said the man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable. The man is in his 60s and does not want to be publicly identified.



Kupelo, the health department spokesman, urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead. ABC News explains the seriousness of the situation:

“As amusing as the story is, Kupelo says the underlying issue is very serious. The government has gone public with this case to warn people that only trained health officials should declare people dead.
‘This is why we’re saying as a health department that people should call health services to have their relatives declared and certified dead and not these private mortuaries,’ he said. ‘Those guys are aren’t trained paramedics. They’re about business.’â€
​

The man’s family was informed that he was alive during a family meeting convened to make funeral arrangements. They’re very happy to have him home, Maqolo said.


But Maqolo said he is still trying to recover from the traumatic experience.
“I couldn’t slp last night, I had nightmares,†he said. “But today I’m much better.â€

 

[Rocky]

I think I saw that movie

 

[CarlS]

That is enough to give anyone nightmares!!

 

[DaveM]

As we say "Only in Africa"

 

[The Seeker]

Evidently a medial professional like an actual DOCTOR doesn't have to pronounce someone dead there?

That's crazy!

Who signs a person's death certificate?

 

[CarlS]

It is rather shocking. But then I guess way out in the bush in the tribal areas doctors are not exactly over abundant. It would be hard to write a law covering this.

 

[Gromit]

Seeker, in the very rural areas, the nearest hospital could be 100's of kilometres away and absolutely no doctor or trained medical specialist in the villages unless you count witchdoctors as medical professionals. So the morgue owners will pronounce the person dead, provide the family with a letter confirming the 'death' and the family then have to go to the nearest SA Dept of Home Affairs and have a death certificate issued. Remember that SA still has a massive uneducated, illiterate population and the formalities of registering a birth or a death is simply lost on them - they still do things in the traditional tribal way that they've been doing for years.

In a case like this, many people in the rural village will see this 'rising from the dead' as an act or spell from a witchdoctor and they guy will either be totally feared and hence obeyed by everyone or every little ill or ailment that befalls the village will be blamed on him and someone will arrange his demise - for real! And it'll all be put down to tradition and sangomas (witchdoctors).

 

[The Seeker]

So out in the bush, if someone has a stroke, there's no ambulance or anyone to help you?

 

[The Seeker]

At the very least then......require that morgue owners always have on staff someone who'd gotten proper training in pronouncing someone dead.

There are certain accurate tests which would leave no doubt and could easily be made into a training course which they would have to pass to work there.

 

[CarlS]

I doubt it unless you have a satellite phone or radio communincations - not much different than our West and even Florida until the 20th century. We were still a frontier nation.

 

[Gromit]

So out in the bush, if someone has a stroke, there's no ambulance or anyone to help you?

At the very least then......require that morgue owners always have on staff someone who'd gotten proper training in pronouncing someone dead.

There are certain accurate tests which would leave no doubt and could easily be made into a training course which they would have to pass to work there.
​

If you're in the bush or even travelling long distance through rural areas (like the Karoo area) and have a medical emergency, you're in serious trouble indeed. SA may not be a big country by US standards but it's not heavily populated at all so getting the right help if you're in the hinterlands, is near impossible. Especially as there's no cell phone connections in much of the rural areas or if you're travelling through a mountain pass etc.
To have the morgue owners trained?? I laugh at this statement but it's a really valid question. I only laugh because our government can't even legislate and control these rural morgue operators let alone provide the necessary training. I'd risk an estimate that 85% of the rural morgue owners have no training whatsoever. But funerals and burials amongst the African people is BIG, BIG money. The line between 'tradition' and showing-off in the villages or amongst the African people, has become more than blurred.
They will practise all the traditional things such as cleansing the deceased's home, burning their clothes, slaughtering a cow or sheep or goat but the big money comes in with the family having to live up to the last funeral in the village. The coffin (they don't do cremations) will be of the most elaborate you can imagine and then comes the headstone. I know African families who live in rural villages in the Eastern Cape area who can't feed themselves but got into lifelong debt because they bought a coffin and headstone to the tune of ZAR40 000! About $5500. These people eke out a living by subsistance farming and maybe if they're lucky, they've sent 1 child to the city to work and this 1 earner is then responsible for the entire family and believe me, the extended family goes on and on. Then the 'wake' after the funeral - the entire village comes, strangers from neighbouring villages come and the family is obligated to feed these hordes of people, sometimes for 2 or 3 days! It's really crazy by our standards or any standard really.

 

[DaveM]

The one guy in my office goes fishing on our wild coast they sort of camp out. So on this one fishing ttrip with his buddies (the one buddy being a medical surgeon) they see this black women with this child around 13 or so. They have just walked around 70 kilometer = 43.495 983 457 mile to the nearest medical clinic as they child had chopped his hand in an accident. The staff gave them 4 aspirin and sent them away. When my buddies doctor friend saw it septicaemia had set in. Lucky when they go fishing he always takes a load of medical supplies with because of the lack of any real medical facility. Any way he said that the child would have died within a week without treatment. So he treated it and kept and eye on it that week while they were fishing. If it was not for him the child would have died for sure. Now this is not an isolated thing and it happens all the time even in our big hospitals. That is why if you don't have a great medical aid (medical insurance) your side you are in serious trouble if you need to use the public medical facilities